Sovereign debt is, simply put, the money a country owes to its creditors around the world. Ian Bremmer explains a few more fun facts about debt on GZERO World.

Good old Ben Franklin once quipped, “Rather go to bed without dinner than to rise in debt.” Well, America didn’t exactly heed that advice, because never in its history did the US hit the hay hungry. In fact, the nation ended the Revolutionary War years about $75 million in debt.

US debt hit the billions by the time the Civil War was over, and was at $22 billion after World War One.